


that's how you learn (just who you are)

by Runespoor



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Character Study, Editorial Ableism, Gen, Oracle - Freeform, reboot rejects together!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 03:32:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know how DC wanted Babs to not be disabled anymore, and how plenty of people still wanted her to be Oracle? Yeah, this is that. (the DCnU can go jump off a cliff)</p>
            </blockquote>





	that's how you learn (just who you are)

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from the Sounds' _Underground_ , and title from the Sounds' _Home is where your heart is_.

_The past is a place that you can never return to  
Even though people say that this is where you belong  
\- The Sounds_

1.

She keeps a Batgirl plush by her computer. 

When Nightwing comes over he rarely can help playing with it, throwing it into the air and catching it again, with as much care as a young father throwing a laughing toddler into the air. She’s pretty sure that if she asked the right persons, she’d find people from Hayley’s circus who’d remember the time when Dick was five and his father threw him into the air to make him laugh. Or maybe not: when Dick was five he was already an acrobat, and leaping from a trapeze to another came much closer to flying. 

But the gesture featured in Babs’ early childhood, and over that memory superimposes that of Dick taking her to the circus – taking her flying on a trapeze.

“Stop that,” she tells him, and snatches the doll out of his hands.

He blinks behind his mask, beautifully oblivious, and spreads his hands in an innocent gesture. “Oh. Okay, sure. So what do you think? The Bloodhound Gang is moving in?”

Seamlessly, he flows from a topic to another, from a position to the second. He’s fluid with everything he is, unfixed, free, extending himself to reach all the parts of their world. Bruce is the only nail planted in Dick’s being, immovable object inserted in the heart of the irresistible force; that which Dick has grown around and Babs has seen stay unchanged.

Sometimes she resents Dick for that, for not giving her the same freedom he thoughtlessly enjoys, and for trying to fit her into the same unchangeable shape as Batman.

She’s not an acrobat and she’s not a gargoyle, and yet he tries to twist her into the latter as though she was the former.

 

2.

When she comes back out of the hospital, a lot of friends pop up to see how she is, congratulate her.

She bears it as graciously as she can (which is only slightly more gracious than her mentor with the Bat cowl), and when night falls she excuses herself – graciously, still so very graciously, a lady turning her friends away for the night.

She sighs and massages her temples, before slipping her spectacles back on, and turning back to the greenish glow of her screens.

The Oracle’s job is never done.

 

3.

Steph’s voice is small over the com.

“Are you—“ she clears her voice, and starts again. Putting on a brave face for every time she tripped over, Barbara guesses. “Are you going to want the costume back?”

Steph hasn’t been the only one to assume Barbara ought to jump back to Batgirl. Some have been quiet, Tim’s silence, and what she could see in Dick’s eyes. Others, less so: Helena cutting to the point, and the frankness no-one but Dinah would think to present her with. 

Bruce hasn’t said anything, but Batman is waiting. Alfred wanted her to know he could have her fitted for a costume.

Her dad is dancing around the issue.

She’s been patient, if only because the only people who were brave enough to ask her outright were those who least deserve her anger, because they’re the ones who take her being Oracle for granted. She founded the Birds: as long as she keeps on leading them, to them the rest is mere details.

Steph maybe deserves more of an answer and more of her patience than anyone, but Babs is tired of looking for the formers and forever short on the latter. 

“No, Bat _girl_ , I’m long past my teenage years and I don’t especially want to relive them.”

What she wants is ask for a little credit here, but that’s a Stephanie Brown thing, a Batgirl thing. That’s the kind of thing Barbara is long past, and she wishes it were possible to start simply _having_ the credit Oracle earned.

 

4.

When Barbara closes her eyes and thinks of Batgirl, she thinks of red hair, and the relieved wince of the end of the night, when she took her ridiculous, outrageous yellow boots off. (They went with their times, disco and flashy like Nightwing’s costume. Both more appropriate for young, pretty people going clubbing that for crimefighters.)

When she thinks of herself, she thinks of her biceps extending to roll her from place to place, of the warmth of a nearby mug, of her glowing screens and stretching in her chair. She thinks of Oracle’s eyes all over Gotham, of Oracle’s ears that reach farther still. She thinks of Martian Manhunter calling her for info, Wonder Woman smiling at her in recognition, and Superman flying where she directs him.

 

5.

A tall woman in flat heels comes home. She locks the door behind her, and unhurried puts water to boil. While she waits, she checks her multiple computers, and a thousand tiny red alert lights come to life. 24 hours satellite feeds fill her in on the latest news: an earthquake in Italy, a kidnapping in Tunisia, a madman with mystical powers chanting over Aztec temples, a madman with a gun three subway stations over. Messages from the JLA, from the Titans, from Huntress, from Batman. Other, personal messages that’ll have to wait until this crisis is taken care of, too.

Barbara sighs and smiles, and slips her earcom back in.


End file.
